Editor’s Column / Lucia Brown
This issue of Tortoise demonstrates how creative thinking factors into our writing in a myriad of ways, even through traditional prompts. How can close-reading change how we understand art? How can theory be employed to illuminate, critique, and understand case studies? How can we imagine our own roles in contributing to a scholarly conversation? And finally, in the EEB paper in this section, how can creativity in the structure of an assignment itself help us practice new methods and techniques?
In my past three years as a Writing Center Fellow, I have noticed a rise in creative prompts coming into the conference room. The freedom and form of these assignments can often be daunting for students. Remember that creativity in writing has no disciplinary boundaries! We have been steeped in creative thinking since the beginning of our writing journeys at Princeton, from forming a motive question to figuring out our own scholarly positions. Academic writing assignments often push us to synthesize ideas, find gaps, think on our toes, and raise new questions—all of which are creative.
Here are a few strategies I use in my own creative academic work and ways I have helped students in the conference room approach that unexpected prompt.
Before you start writing, read the prompt out loud. This can help dispel some of the intimidation around the prompt (even if it’s just a sentence or two long). As you read, try turning the prompt into a to-do list. What are the different tasks you will have to accomplish within this assignment? This list can look as simple as (1) ask a question and (2) answer it in 3 – 4 pages. That’s a start! Then, imagine why your professor would have handed you this to-do list. What skills or knowledge is your professor trying to assess? Has this theme been assessed in other ways already in your course? What kinds of strategies of analysis are you expected to employ?
Based on this list of requirements, free-write a couple of project ideas. A personal motive is an important and often under-appreciated driving force when considering the approach to a paper—a project you care about is usually much more interesting to research and write. Ask yourself what ideas in the readings you found the most engaging. What do you still have questions about? What would you like to learn more about? (A professor once told me that in brainstorming a project, a useful strategy is to look back at the questions I asked in my reading responses). As you jot down ideas, also keep in mind the scope of the project—what might seem too big for a midterm project could end up being a good idea for a final paper.
Depending on the prompt and your project ideas, you may still have questions. Trust your confusion. Imagine trying to go through with one of the projects you came up with, and come up with specific questions for your professor about the assignment. What in the prompt do you need clarification on? If you do not have a rubric or any grading criteria, what are the professor’s expectations? What are the boundaries? Some professors with open-ended assignments require students to pitch their project in office hours. They can provide you with useful directions and point you to resources you did not know about. Think about what else you need on that to-do list to make you confident as you embark on this project, and reach out with enough time for your professor to respond.
As you work with creative assignments, the lexicon terms are still useful, though they may manifest in new ways. Think carefully through your structure, especially. Regardless of the form of your project, structure will still apply, and thinking purposefully through it can do a lot of work for you. What do you want your audience to see or learn most? How can you compellingly tell your story? In what order? To add nuance, think about how you can connect ideas from class into your project. Could a theoretical concept be a useful lens? How does the form of your creative project shed new light on material from your course? If you are concerned about putting a thesis into your creative project, think about what the thread is through your structure; the structure can also be an argument for seeing something a certain way.
Keep in mind that creative assignments can also be an opportunity to push yourself in new ways—while I was making a podcast for a midterm project in a course on the history of Soviet media, I found myself braiding challah, interviewing a rabbi, and moving trays in the kitchen of the Center for Jewish Life. At the end of the week, as I edited the podcast—also something I had never done before—I was blown away by how thrilling it had been to work on the project.
The strategies in this article are particularly designed for when you’re given a creative prompt. But as this issue has shown, though, creative approaches are useful across the board. With the kinds of creative thinking and attention anticipated from our standard writing assignments, maybe the creative prompt is just making this expectation more explicit.
Happy creating!
